The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals.  Michael Pollan.   New York: Penguin, 2006.

Read this book, and you may never look at food in quite the same way again.  Michael Pollan has looked very closely at our food, and sees extensive health, environmental, and ethical implications in our food-production system, and in our food choices.

Journalist Pollan has followed 4 meals from their origins to the plate.  He addresses questions of food politics and food economics, and in tracking the origins of a fast-food meal, he documents the alarming extent to which our food consists of highly-processed corn  grown in monocultures disastrous to the natural world and to our health, and fed to us as well as to the animals we eat.

The results of this food system are the packaged products full of mysterious and unpronounceable ingredients cramming grocery stores, as well as the burgers, fries and sodas churned out by fast-food outlets. The notion of “corn-fed beef” sounds so terribly wholesome… until Pollan explains that cows are built to eat grass, and don’t readily digest corn.  And check that bottle of “green tea” you pick up because it sounds all healthy and natural… it might be full of high fructose corn syrup, a highly-processed corn sweetener long on calories and short on nutrition.

We do, however, have other options, as Pollan makes clear.  Farmers markets are springing up everywhere, making it possible to buy locally-grown produce and even eggs and meat, and to know where at least some of our own food is coming from.    Organic foods are increasingly visible in supermarkets, but there are caveats to consider.   Supermarkets  clearly get the attractiveness of labels like ‘organic’ and ‘natural’, but the variety of claims made on foods can be mind-boggling:  eggs alone might claim to be ‘cage-free’, ‘high in omega-3’, ‘organic’, and/or ‘from vegetarian-diet hens’, etc., all of which can mean different things, or not really mean much.   Buy eggs at your local farm stand or farmer’s market, and you at least know where they came from.

Michael Pollan wants us to change the way we eat – for environmental, economic, moral, and health reasons, but also for lasting pleasure.  “How and what we eat,” he says, “determines to a great extent the use we make of the world – and what is to become of it. To eat with a fuller consciousness of all that is at stake might sound like a burden, but in practice few things in life can afford quite as much satisfaction. … In the end this is a book about the pleasures of eating, the kinds of pleasure that are only deepened by knowing.” (p.11).

-Bonnie Figgatt

Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam

Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam.  Gordon M. Goldstein.  New York: Times Books, 2008.

With questions pressing about American involvement in Afghanistan, the Vietnam-war decision making chronicled in Lessons in Disaster has become a hot topic.  The book’s author, Gordon M. Goldstein, wrote one of two op-ed pieces on Vietnam-Afghanistan parallels in the October 18, 2009 New York Times, laying out “lessons” that he considers “relevant to Afghanistan today”.

As national security adviser to presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 to 1965, McGeorge Bundy was a major player in presidential decisions about American involvement in Vietnam.    Goldstein’s history of these crucial decision points and Bundy’s involvement in them revisits the path to war in Vietnam, a path that has been compared to current United States involvement in Afghanistan.

Indeed, New York Times columnist Frank Rich unearthed the news that Lessons in Disaster has recently been a much-read title among President Barack Obama’s advisers, as the President grapples with decisions about American strategy in Afghanistan.  Rich compares the current situation with early decisions made by President Kennedy about Vietnam, and analyzes the parallels in his Sept. 27, 2009 piece, “Obama at the Precipice”.

Rich further points out that Lessons in Disaster was reviewed last year by Richard Holbrooke in the New York Times Book Review.  Holbrooke, currently the Obama administration’s special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, called the book “an extraordinary cautionary tale for all Americans”.

Bonnie Figgatt

Ryan-Matura Library Event – Researching Patent and Trademark Information

Researching Patent and Trademark Information

A Free Seminar for Inventors, Entrepreneurs, Educators and Legal Professionals

Monday, October 26, 2009
Schine Auditorium
Sacred Heart University

Space is limited.  Reservations are required; they may be made by calling 203-365-4818 Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., or by email to gaitherr@sacredheart.edu

8:30 a.m.	Registration
9:00	Welcome / Patent and Trademark Resources at Sacred Heart University’s Ryan-Matura Library Rachel Gaither, Business Librarian and PTDL Representative, Ryan-Matura Library
9:15	Overview of Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights and Trade Secrets Natalie Polzer, Trademark Examining Attorney, Trademark Law Office 108, U.S. Patent & Trademark Office
9:45	Video:  Promoting Innovation: Today’s USPTO
10:15	Break
10:30	Conducting a Patent Search Using the USPTO Website Tom Turner, Librarian, Patent and Trademark Depository Library Program, USPTO
11:30	Ribbon Cutting Ceremony at Sacred Heart University Library
12:00	Lunch (on your own)
1:30	Federal Trademarks:  Insight on the USPTO Examination Process and Conducting a Federal Trademark Search Using the USPTO Website Natalie Polzer, USPTO
2:30	Break
2:45	Invention Promotion Firms:  How to Ask the Right Questions Tom Turner, USPTO
3:00	PubWEST Overview:  Access to the Web-based Examiner’s Search Tool Tom Turner, USPTO
3:30	Program Adjournment / Patent and Trademark Depository Library Tours

Hangmen Also Die

Hangmen Also Die is a compelling drama about operations by a Czech resistance network during the Second World War.  Like many other American films that were made during the war, Hangmen Also Die portrays the German Secret State Police (Gestapo) as reassuringly incompetent and corrupt.  The resistance group, on the other hand, is admirably resilient in the face of ruthless intimidation.  The portrayals in Hangmen Also Die, however, are much less clumsy than in other films from this period.  This is in part due to the collaboration of Fritz Lang, Bertolt Brecht, and John Wexler in the writing for the film.  As the story unfolds, a surgeon (Brian Donlevy) has assassinated Reinhard Heydrich.  A young woman (Anna Lee) misleads police as to the direction that the assassin ran.  Her actions lead quickly to the involvement of her entire family in the ensuing investigation, culminating in her father’s (Walter Brennan) detention awaiting likely execution.  In the end, the solidarity of the Czech citizenry proves a worthy match for the Nazi occupation.

Buck Berry